Anyone who witnesses a polio vaccination campaign in Pakistan will notice something remarkable: In most areas, the majority of health workers moving house to house to vaccinate children against this highly infectious paralytic disease are women.
However, despite their outsize role in providing life-saving vaccinations and other essential services to children in every corner of the country, these frontline workers are rarely consulted on matters of health policy. This year, as Pakistan strives to eradicate wild polio once and for all, input and feedback from the women leading these efforts on the ground must be incorporated into the program’s design. There is no hope of success otherwise.
Today, wild polio — a scourge that once caused irreversible paralysis, or even death, all around the world — remains endemic in just two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Vaccination is the key to stopping this virus once and for all, and in Pakistan, the success of vaccination campaigns largely depends on female health workers. In many communities, women can enter homes where men cannot and, as a result, are able to build lasting trust with families.
Decades of progress, reflecting the work of thousands, have brought us closer to success than ever before: Wild polio cases in Pakistan are at an extreme low, endemic transmission is now geographically restricted to just seven districts and 10 of the 11 strains of virus circulating in 2020 have been wiped out.
A polio-free Pakistan is within our grasp, and the women on the front lines will help to carry us over the finish line. Recognizing this reality, the country’s polio eradication program launched an unprecedented initiative to listen to underrepresented female health workers and engage them as copartners in designing solutions to end polio in Pakistan.
The first step was to gather data at scale by surveying a representative sample of more than 2,600 women working in the highest-risk districts. They answered questions about their experiences and challenges in the field, including the barriers to reaching children during campaigns and administering vaccines in homes, as well as their motivations and safety concerns.
Based on the survey results, 14 in-person workshops were held across the country, bringing together hundreds of female frontline workers in dedicated listening sessions. In addition to swapping stories and experiences, attendees suggested solutions for the biggest hurdles to ending polio in their districts and shared their hopes for future livelihoods beyond polio. The leadership at Pakistan’s National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) — the heart of the country’s polio program — promised to review and act on the valuable feedback gathered from these structured listening sessions.
I was lucky enough to attend one of the workshops and the sense of excitement was palpable. Knowledgeable women, whose extremely valuable work has been underappreciated for too long, finally had the floor and were eager to help design a more effective program that better reflects the reality they face every day.
The importance of such an exercise was evident from their creative ideas for addressing practical challenges like having to choose between walking for hours or hiring private transport during rush hour in to work on time. They also brainstormed about how to overcome parents’ refusal of the polio vaccine, owing to misconceptions about how best to protect their children, and disrespect for polio workers in many communities.
This codesign initiative is just one example of the Pakistani government’s revitalized commitment to engage women more deeply in public-health efforts. The NEOC, for example, established its own National Gender Group, tasked with giving a voice to the women who are essential to eradication efforts — starting with initiatives like this one.
Pakistan’s government was the first in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to launch such a program, and I am encouraged to see that we are not alone. With similar efforts to listen to and learn from female health workers now under way in Somalia, Nigeria and other countries, a global movement is taking shape. In many places, it is the first time that women have a seat at the policymaking table.
As the world faces a historic convergence of crises, from climate change to pandemics and persistent conflict, women’s policy input is indispensable — and not just to improving healthcare. After years spent engaging with local communities to battle outbreaks and provide essential services, these frontline workers will play a crucial role in designing solutions far beyond the eradication of polio.
Here in Pakistan, our polio program’s National Gender Group has much work to do. Female health workers across the country have proposed hundreds of solutions to address the key challenges they face, and the program is now reviewing and refining them, and deciding which will be implemented later this year.
Thousands of women have raised their voices and we owe it to them to act. At the workshop, I understood that the future of Pakistan rests in their hands. Following their lead in fine-tuning Pakistan’s polio eradication effort is the key to ending this disabling and life-threatening disease.
Atiya Aabroo, deputy director of Pakistan’s Ministry of National Health Services, is a core member of the National Gender Group within the National Emergency Operations Centre.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
RSS